Entries Tagged 'What I’ve been doing' ↓

So we have to fit band practice into our weekly schedules for a while! The Mister has been cajoled into joining a band of other hopeful wanna-be-rockstars, to play at an event called ‘Rocktober’ in October – an evening of 80’s rock from this band and a rock DJ to raise money for The Cancer Society.

Lucky for me it’s a borrowed kit. For now …

So I’m receiving increasing pressure to blog which I will hopefully have time for while we’re in the States but in the meantime hope you’ve enjoyed the little rush of them over the last week. I’ve just had no time to sit down and do them when I get home and they’ve been floating around in my head bothering me. It’s weird that I have that feeling that I just have to get everything done before we go – at this rate I’ll have finished all my work before we get there and have none left to do – ridiculous because I’m not stopping work when we get there! Well, except for the first week off.

Anyway, it’s about this time of the night I find myself home at the dining table. Yes working. I often glance up to the traffic coming around from The Terrace and I always notice that many of them go over the double line onto the wrong side of the road. Some not so much, some a lot. Some so much that in the space of an hour there could’ve been some very bad accidents were a car coming the other way at the same time. The corner is pretty sharp, but there is a warning sign that it’s a left-angle bend and most people at this time of the day must be on the evening commute so surely realise how sharp the corner is.

So, in manner of nosy old woman twitching net curtains in a cul de sac, I decided to take 5 minutes to tally up how many cars came around the corner and how many went wide enough to be riding on the double yellow line and see whether any went way over.

The tally from 6.25pm – 6.30pm

• 65 – number of cars that came around that corner in 5 minutes
• 42 – number of cars that tracked a ‘good’ line around the bend
• 20 – cars that were close too or on the double yellow line (I define that as wide)
• 3 – cars that went OVER the yellow line (and a scooter!)

I was rather shocked!

Don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but on TV programmes and in movies, whenever someone leaves their job they seem to do so with only one box. A brown or white file box, often with a lid and sometimes with a plant. Seems a bit dubious to me because I seem to have a lot of stuff around and under my desk, not to mention the collection of orange pens and post-it notes.

However, today we packed up our desks in the likely event that due to Xero’s continuing growth spurt new people will need to sit at our desks while we’re gone. After recycling my non-essentials I was very surprised that I have stuffed my 3 years at Xero into ONE box! Includes my collection of orange things, cup, framed pictures, the Xero User Guide when it existed in book form, a ream of orange paper and more!

It now waits in the storeroom with my special orange chair for my return.

So that’s our desks spring-cleaned, and the apartment – have scrubbed pantry, shower (with a toothbrush even!), fridge, balcony pots; emptied, scrutinized and repacked cupboards under stairs, basins and hot water cupboard and we’re now down to eating strange meals to use up bits of random food from freezer, fridge and pantry. And to top off the weekend The Mister went next door to see our neighbour who we don’t see for months (so she probably wouldn’t’ve noticed we were gone) to tell her about a stranger coming and going from our apartment only to be greeted by a stranger staying there while she was away – looking rather rumpled and disturbed in a bathrobe so he’s quite embarrassed. Dammit. The first time I’ve ever got him to go over to the neighbours and that. Now he’ll never go again. Sigh.

This year I’m doing a project that quite a few people have done – Project 365 – which is to take a photo every day of the year. I don’t really have an artistic goal in mind, not aiming to get better at taking photos or anything like that, it’s just I take quite a lot of photos of random, every day things anyway so I thought I might as well make a conscious effort to take and publish one photo a day.

So, January is over and I have 31 photos for the project so far.

The photos are published on Flickr, in my set called Project 365.

So to finish of the year the wind dropped, The  Mister cooked steak (not often cooked at our place and he said it was the best steak he’d had in a long time), the clouds moved along and we sat out on the balcony on top of Wellington for dinner as the birds came to roost in the trees below. Happy times.

Even in an apartment without a real Christmas tree you can have the smell of Christmas with a few branches of pine …. mmmmm! Although it does look like some kind of triffid!

Man, it’s been a real Susie-Homemaker weekend! Today after going into the office all morning I spent the afternoon baking and ‘gardening’!

Made the first batch of Christmas mince pies for this year. I didn’t make fruit mince earlier in October as I have 2 jars left from last year – I got Mother to sniff it when they were here in October to make sure it was still OK and her verdict was good … mind you the amount of brandy I ‘whoops’ when measuring (Christmas baking or tiramisu!) is probably enough to ferment anything!

Then out into the increasing wind on the balcony to plant this year’s basil. Good stiff breeze to blow away any nasties in the potting mix though.

However since planting it about 3 hours ago I’ve watched out the window in horror as Wellington delivered stronger and stronger wind (gusting up to 74km/hr according to wunderground.com) battering around the poor tiny plants! Oh well, they’ve got to get used to it!!

What a big Saturday! We knew it would be and planned for it to be. It was our Christmas shopping day – chilled the champagne for wrapping later, wrote out the list in order of where in town we had to go and set off early. I also had a very lofty goal of making shorty PJ’s as requested by my niece for Christmas. Hmm, all that in one day? And me sew a whole outfit, not just shorten some jeans or run up a pair of PJ pants for myself? We’ll see.

It was pretty cool walking down Cuba Street – loads of people out and about and enjoying coffee in the sun.

List ticked off, home to make the PJ’s. I’d cut out the material on Friday night after work – thankful for yoga at this point – I could be Gollum!

The Mister was a bit snap-happy with the camera – I don’t think he could quite believe that I could sew what I’d shown him in the picture, so I’m posting the whole afternoon/evening’s-worth of photos I’m afraid!

Ironing the teeny tiny fiddly neck hem.

Sewing like I drive apparently – heavy on the pedal! What!?

Time for the champagne and present-wrapping tradition with a Christmas movie (‘Home Alone’ if you must know Jif!), except I hand-gathered the ruffles while The Mister wrapped.

And at the end of the night we were both completely amazed that after all these years, I can still sew, that I’d done it all in a day and they looked really great! God I hope she likes them. And that they fit!!

So it’s been 6 months without or with low salt and am gradually, well actually sometimes head first, getting it back into my diet.

What I’ve missed:

• pizza
• potato chips (haven’t actually had any yet)
• (close your eyes Steph) pancetta fat
• mashed potatoes with salt on them
• parmesan cheese
• Won’t say peanut butter, as the low salt organic stuff we found is pretty good

So the good news is I don’t have anything nasty lurking in my head (physically that is!) but there’s probably too much stress and anxiety rattling around in there. Amazing how emotional ‘conditions’ can manifest themselves so physically. Might have to make some big changes next year … as I type this I know I won’t!

Day 2 at the conference was way more geeky than the first day. I went decked out in my orange flair again, complete with new WordPress button and wore an orange top!

Thought I’d be the most orange person in the room but in fact there was another girl there in an orange top and she had an orange cover on her Mac Book! We exchanged cards – she had a mini Moo card too! And she’s from New York! So I was pretty excited for a while there. Oh! And then I ‘won’ a Supreme spot prize – not quite sure how, perhaps something to do with waxing lyrical about the Supreme coffee and baristas all weekend but after lunch the guy giving out the prizes said “And now we have our last Supreme pack to give away. Is there a Catherine in the room?” Oh. ME!

So, take-aways from the weekend in no particular order:

• You’re liable for any comments left on your blog.
• And because of that, you shouldn’t moderate comments to the point of editing or allowing/disallowing because that implies you agree/disagree with the comment therefore making you more liable than normal.
• Every other person was tapping constantly on a laptop or iPhone. As a presenter I don’t know what it would be like to address an audience of head tops. I couldn’t handle it. I’d find it so rude and on the rare occasion I do speak I glare and pause dramatically if I see people whispering and not paying attention so god knows what I would do if people were doing something else. And I know they’re not taking notes because I saw some of the screens and what was on them.
• What *is* the etiquette when sitting next to someone who opens a laptop – it’s so much clearer and not easily hidden like a note pad – should one avert their eyes? I almost told the person next to me at one point they had a typo in a Tweet they were writing but thought that probably wasn’t right.
• People who don’t blog and Tweet are referred to as people ‘out there in the real world’.
• Heard the phrase ‘Fairy Dust’ for when a geek does something to the server or user account to fix a customer’s problem.
• Facebook seems to be a place to keep in touch with old friends. Blog is for current stuff.
• Not sure my life will take a different path now, feels like this is it. A guy presenting was 16. On stuff that proper grown ups do. Made me wonder what I’ve been doing since I was 16 and what I was like when I was 16 – god that mustard jumper, that Lady Di hair do and braces. So so different.